Stents are expandable endoprosthetic devices adapted to be placed in a body lumen in order to maintain the patency of a body lumen by providing a flow pathway and/or structural support, for example. Stents are typically used in the treatment of atherosclerotic stenosis in blood vessels and the like to reinforce body vessels and to prevent restenosis following angioplasty in the vascular system. Additionally, stents may be used in the treatment of aneurysms, such as aortic aneurysms, by providing strength to a weakened vascular wall. They have also been implanted in other body lumens, such as urinary tracts and bile ducts. Stents are generally tubular structures that may be radially expandable between an unexpanded size and an expanded size greater than the unexpanded size. Therefore, a stent may be inserted through a body lumen in an unexpanded state and then expanded at a specific location within the lumen to an expanded state.
Stents, as well as other medical devices, are commonly intricately laser cut from a workpiece. The intricate nature of a stent is formed by removing large quantities of material from the workpiece, leaving a delicate structural framework of the stent. The structural framework may then be subjected to additional processes to generate a finished product. The intricate and delicate characteristics of the structural framework greatly reduce the dimensional and structural integrity of the stent, which may compromise subsequent manufacturing processes.
As the use of stents in a variety of medical procedures is gaining widespread acceptance, it is desirable to provide improved methods of manufacturing stents in order to increase efficiency, maintain structural integrity, and/or reduce dimensional inaccuracies. The disclosed stents and accompanying methods of manufacturing a stent may be deemed advantageous in view of the increased usage of stents during medical procedures.